Chapter 1 Study Questions

What is functional magnetic resonance imaging?
What does it mean to create a map of the brain? What sorts of maps could be possible?
What are the differences between measurement and manipulation techniques (in neuroscience)? In what ways are they complementary?
What are the limitations of lesion studies of the brain? How can functional neuroimaging help overcome these limitations?
What are the limitations of drug studies of the brain? How can functional neuroimaging help overcome these limitations?
To what aspect of imaging does “contrast” refer? How could a single image be high-contrast in one sense and low-contrast in another?
What is the difference between structural contrast and functional contrast?
What are voxels?
What is functional resolution, and how is it different from spatial and temporal resolution?
What is resonance?
Why did physicists use oscillating magnetic fields to study magnetic resonance effects?
Describe the experimental apparatus used by Felix Bloch and his colleagues to measure nuclear magnetic resonance effects.
What do you think about the awarding of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Lauterbur and Mansfield, but not Damadian? Was this appropriate or inappropriate, given each person’s contributions to MRI?
What is an image? What advance was most critical to the development of techniques for image formation in MRI?
Why was there a boom in MRI use in the 1980s? How did this growth set the stage for fMRI?